The terrifying scene of a gun, stick and sword-wielding mob of thousands, outside the Ajnala police station in Amritsar on Thursday, was a reminder about the paralysis of the Punjab government. The police capitulating to the mob—by taking a decision to free a Khalistani—was an admission that the Bhagwant Singh Mann-led Aam Admi Party (AAP) government is totally subservient to the ascending violent forces in the state.
These forces have been active in the state for the last three years. Their self-styled leader, a no body from nowhere, whose name can do without more publicity, has been spewing venom through the social media, as has been every tom, dick and harry of the extremist ideology. In an article on this website 14 long months ago, I had wondered if both the state and the central governments were in a state of stupor about the war being waged by the extremists on the social media. The latest developments clear the doubt.
The social media offensive is not all there is to the extremist story. The last two years, the separatists have been laying siege to the homes of parliamentarians and legislators, attacking them physically, and not allowing them to hold public meetings. They did these criminal acts in the guise of the campaign against the proposed farm laws of the central government. None of them was brought to the book. This happened during the time of Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government in Punjab.
During this time, the smuggling of arms and ammunitions from Pakistan also intensified. Amarinder Singh talked openly about it, both in his media meetings and those with union home minister Amit Shah. It is the threat posed by the arms’ smuggling that led to the central government’s decision to extend the jurisdiction of the Border Security Force (BSF) from 15 to 50 kilometres inside the international border in Punjab (besides West Bengal and Assam), in October 2021.
Charanjit Singh Channi, who had just replaced Amarinder Singh as chief minister after months of internal wars in the Congress, was so excited about his position that he forgot all about the threat of extremism and its Pakistan backers. The best Channi did was to pretend that it was a hoax. He even wrote a letter to the central government, objecting to the move to extend the BSF’s jurisdiction as an “attack on federalism” and telling it to “immediately roll back the irrational decision.”
That the decision was rational and justified is now clear. The state police is ill-prepared to handle any extreme situation, as indicated by the siege of the Ajnala police station. The subsequent release of a Khalistani by the police, apparently on the instructions of the state government, says a lot about the government. Seen against the background of the Ajnala incident, Mann comes across as too raw a politician and administrator to steer Punjab out of its extremist troubles.
The incident also underlines that all the obvious signs of the building storm of extremism in Punjab were ignored for long. The threat of terrorism, which started with the physical attacks on elected representatives two years ago and culminated in the killing of Shiv Sena leader Sudhir Suri last November, is real. The extremist leaders, whose Pakistan intelligence-funded propaganda is fanning the communal fires, should be dealt with an iron hand. Their social media sites should be banned and the independent media should simply stop covering their public meetings or, at least, not give them undue coverage.
A television headline a day after the Ajnala incident I found particularly striking, and reminiscent of the misguided media projection of extremist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwala during the 1980s, was, “Visphotak (explosive) interview with…..(the unmentionable name).” In the lure of higher TRPs, the media might find it enjoyable to use such expressions and to give hyper exposure to the extremist leaders. Tomorrow, when they actually start exploding bombs in Punjab and elsewhere, the same media guys would not know where to run for cover, neither would their viewers and the rest of the public. Responsible journalism and such headlines do not go together.
The entire political establishment in the state and centre, and the media had better be warned against the extremists. The criminal mob outside the Ajnala police station last Thursday was made up of a few thousand people, who only represent themselves, not the Sikhs. Give such mobsters the oxygen of publicity and see them destroy the Sikh community and the state of Punjab all over again—just as they did during the 1980s. Unless all of us act responsibly, the lunatic fringe of the state polity would succeed in adding more dark chapters to Punjab’s history.
The author is a Delhi-based journalist
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